The one thing the data don’t do is disprove the suspicion that the alerts are partly politically motivated. (I’ll give you one guess about who’s claiming that it does.)

When the Secretary of Homeland Security, a professional politician with no actual security credentials, credits the “President’s leadership” as part of his speech announcing the latest alert, it’s surely not far-fetched to think he might know it’s an election year.

I think John Kerry did the right thing, substantively as well as politically, in disowning Howard Dean’s comments on this; public figures need to be careful of what they say, and given that no one outside the government knows how solid the basis for the warnings might be, the rest of us have no choice but to act as if the warnings are real. After all, one of these days there will be a wolf, even if we know that Peter (George)(Tom)(John) is somewhat veridically challenged.

But that’s not the same as saying that Dean was wrong. This is an Administration that has lived by Mark Twain’s maxim: “Tell the truth, or trump. But take the trick.” If people are skeptical of terror warnings coming out of this Administration, it’s not without reason.

Author: Mark Kleiman

Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The EconomistAgainst Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA HomepageCurriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman